Computer vision systems find many applications in various fields such as automatic target recognition for military purposes, medical systems for the detection of tumors, and security and law enforcement systems for finger print identification and, more recently, face recognition of wanted criminals. The computer vision system typically has a digital camera that detects an unknown object having edge segments and converts the detected unknown object into an image represented by digital quantities that are extensively processed by known pattern recognition techniques so that the unknown object can be classified as being a known object.
Pattern recognition of unknown objects is somewhat hindered in its ability to decompose images of unknown objects into their constituent multi-scale edge segments (MSESs). To better provide for this decomposition, the wavelet projection transforms (WPTs) may be employed in a manner, as more fully described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/833,482. It is further desired to have an efficient high speed hardware implementation of the wavelet projection transform. This implementation would consist of a special camera that outputs direct imagery in the wavelet projection transform domain. This camera would consist of a unique spinning focal plane array, a special read out, and preferably spinning optics.